


but what if

by chaospitals (hardscrabble)



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Getting Together, M/M, Summer 2019, hockeyblr gift exchange
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-13
Updated: 2019-10-13
Packaged: 2020-12-14 20:34:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21021863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hardscrabble/pseuds/chaospitals
Summary: Chris is pretty sure the summer is gonna suck, that he's gonna get stuck in his head, but he manages to keep busy.





	but what if

**Author's Note:**

  * For [notmytypewriter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/notmytypewriter/gifts).

> bruins fluff for [luna](http://kureally.tumblr.com) in the 2019 hockey gift exchange. hope you like it!

Going into it, after breakdown day, Chris is pretty sure the summer is gonna suck. 

_Seven_ weddings, for crying out loud, not like he’s not happy for all of them, of course, and he’s not allowed to do stuff because of his arm, and that’s not even counting the giant ugly aching bruise of the series loss. Early on he gets stuck in his head sometimes, like, what if he’d been on the ice for the final, what if he’d healed just a _ little _ faster, what if what if what if…

Anyway.

Half the guys are overseas for the offseason, but Gryz and Coyle stick around—duh—and between all the weddings, training and workouts with them keep him busy. They don’t really talk much about the postseason. What’s there to say? _ What if I’d been on the ice? _ Please. Chris knows he’s good; he also knows he’s not _ that _good, and it sounds like a platitude but it’s true: players don’t win games, or series, or the Cup. The team does.

And theirs didn’t.

Okay, maybe it’s not just early on that he’s in his head.

The ice bucket anniversary thing helps. Mid-July, even in Boston, kind of lends itself to dousing yourself in ice water, and besides, Charlie’s there. Charlie’s always there, except for the six years he was in Minnesota. When he came back—Chris can’t help thinking of it like that, even though that’s not how the league works, like, no GM thinks about getting a guy to _ come home_; home is where the contract’s signed—it felt like Chris’s entire _ life _ relaxed, like he’d been putting in a ton of work to stay balanced that he hadn’t even noticed. Charlie’s just like that.

Despite being really noticeable. It’s kind of a problem. Or it probably would be, if Chris let himself, like, think about it.

They don’t hang out the entire event, of course; it’s a fundraiser, and they reach more people when they split up. But for the actual ice bucket part, they’re side by side on the stage, and Charlie kind of smirks at him like _ get ready, bro_, but it’s the kind of smirk where his eyes go kind of crinkly and soft. So upending the ice bucket over his head is kind of redundant because Chris is already feeling kind of shivery. Just in a different way.

Okay, maybe he’s thinking about it.

Or he’s _ aware _ of it, kind of in the back of his head, like he has been, pretty much since juniors. Charlie is a moose of a guy, but he talks in this soft voice and has these soft eyes and this smile like you’re totally making his day. He has since juniors. The Wild didn’t change any of that. His play changed; _ he _ didn’t.

Considering all that, Chris is actually doing pretty good, right?

After the event wraps, or while the event is wrapping—there’s no one single point when they point at you and say _ hey, get out of here_; people just kind of trickle away—Charlie wanders over. “What’s the rest of the day for you?”

Chris shrugs. “Nothing. Like, X-box.” He immediately feels like an idiot. He talks all drawl-y still, and who just plays videogames by themselves when they’re 27?

“Wanna hang?” says Charlie, kindly ignoring his crisis of maturity, or whatever.

Which is how they end up hanging around downtown for, like, _ hours_. They eat a couple times, whatever looks good—it’s the offseason; they’re _ allowed_, even though the summer’s short—and get a few beers and talk about nothing. Not nothing. Charlie’s getting a puppy in a couple weeks, this little golden dude who’s like a month old, and he already has a million photos on his phone from the breeder. Chris talks about all the weddings and how his mom’s on him to spend them looking for someone _ nice _ , that he should start thinking about settling down. Charlie offers his condolences and changes the topic at the speed of light, _ how ’bout them Red Sox, _ which is kind of funny.

When it starts getting dark Chris remembers he has a flask in his car, and yeah, downtown Boston is nice, but they’ve been signing autographs all day or getting sworn at for losing to St. Louis, which sucks. Charlie mentions this one park that’s also a historical site from the Revolution—which is, like, basically every park in Boston, but Charlie likes this one, which is good enough for Chris.

He drives, because the flask is in _ his _ car (and the whiskey in it hasn’t fucking evaporated or anything, he checks), and it’d be dumb for both of them to drive. His Spotify playlist is kind of a throwback, like, all these mid-2000s pop punk things. Chris is ready to get chirped to hell for it and has like five arguments in favor of nostalgia in his head when he realizes Charlie is _ singing along_, kind of under his breath. At a red light, Chris looks over at him—_shit_, he looks good, relaxed and totally zoned and _ happy _ —and after a few seconds, Charlie glances back and stops singing instantly, with this look like _ he’s _ ready to get chirped. “What,” he says, defensive.

“Nothing,” says Chris. “Obviously.” He turns up the volume a little bit, and he can’t sing at _ all _ but he kind of recites the lyrics until the light turns green, and he can see Charlie smiling out of the corner of his eye.

It’s stupidly attractive.

God.

The park is deserted, even though it’s a nice night, but that just means no one’s going to give a shit that they’re passing a flask between them. They settle on the grass, fifty yards or so from the tower that was somehow important to the Revolution, and talk and drink. There’s not enough in a flask to get, like, wasted on, but it’s decent whiskey, so whatever. Chris tells Charlie about the media thing with Nordy, their weird FaceTime conversation meant for like a million people to watch. “You know, that day I squatted more than you? He’s like, _ sure you did_.”

“You tell him I beat you the next day?”

“Told him I thought you would.”

Charlie laughs and they both go quiet, just passing the flask. Chris is unavoidably, idiotically aware that his mouth is touching the same place Charlie’s just was, which shouldn’t—they’re buddies, right, that’s not what you—

“You think about it?” Charlie asks, quiet, and Chris brings himself around in a hurry. “The final?”

Chris swallows. “Try not to,” he says, just as quiet. “You?”

“All the _ time_. Like, if that pass had connected, or this one, or if—” Charlie shakes his head. “It’s dumb.”

“If I’d even been on the ice,” says Chris, and hates the way it sounds, so he tries to laugh. “Like that would’ve made a difference.”

“It would have, though. You know that.”

He laughs again, a little more convincingly. “Not _ the _ difference. Like, no way to know now—”

“We were playing for you,” says Charlie.

He’s said that before, to media, but his tone right now is… intense, heavy, and Chris doesn’t know what to do with it, so he shakes the flask—still a little left. “I know,” he says. “You wanna kill this?”

“No, like, we _ were_.”

Charlie’s head is turned toward him, and he’s not moving to take the flask, so Chris caps it and faces him and feels his breath stop in his throat. The _ look _ on his face, like he can see into Chris’s head, or wants to. “_I _was,” Charlie says, just as intently. “Playing for you.”

Chris can’t help sighing. “You guys all had my back.”

“No, like—Wags.” Charlie grabs his hand, the one not holding the flask, and Chris nearly drops the thing anyway. “I’m not just _ saying_. I was playing for you, and we didn’t—” He shakes his head again and drops his eyes.

If his hand weren’t on actual fire where Charlie’s holding it—he’s lacing their fingers together, that’s something that’s happening, which is… Chris is _ pretty _ sure he’s not imagining it. He’s definitely not imagining the way Charlie looks, hopeful and freaked-out and pissed and sad all at once. “But I still was.”

The words—_I was playing for you—_finally hit him, for real, and Chris blinks as it fits together in his head.

Shit.

He is in no way prepared for this.

“Next year,” he says, nearly whispers, and squeezes Charlie’s hand a little as he clears his throat. “Next year we play for each other and we bring it home.” _ Or we don’t _. “Or we don’t, and we play for each other anyway.”

Charlie looks up. “Wait, like—”

“Peak of our careers, wearing the spoked B, and good-looking,” Chris goes on, which is actually nonsense, but whatever. “What’s gonna stop us?”

“—like—Really? Playing for—”

“Keep up, bro,” says Chris, and he’s really doing this, because Charlie is _ looking at him _ like a guy in a desert looking at an oasis, or something. Charlie is looking at _ Chris _ like that, and maybe there's no such thing as being _prepared_, but, shit, he’s doing it anyway, so he leans—he barely needs to move; when did they get this close?—and kisses Charlie, the corner of his mouth, the side that curled up when he did that smirk on the stage, and feels him go still.

Then Chris sits back, like he doesn’t feel like he just got struck by actual lightning.

Charlie splutters, “You—” 

And fully just tackles him. One second Chris is sitting upright thinking he could probably fistfight a bear, and the next he’s on his back in the grass, and he’d object to this but all he can see is Charlie, which is pretty unobjectionable, and then Charlie is kissing him, for real, and it’s completely indescribable, so Chris just closes his eyes and goes with it. His hands are at Charlie’s waist, over his t-shirt, and Charlie is gripping his shoulders like he thinks Chris is going to evaporate or something, and this is _ insane _ and actually happening and holy shit, holy shit, holy shit.

“Holy _ shit_,” says Charlie, which is just about right. “Dude, you don’t even know—”

“_ You _ don’t even, man, I’ve been, like—”

“—since I _ got _ here—”

“Got you beat, since juniors for—”

“Okay, okay—yeah, but—” Charlie grins, the smile that never hasn’t stopped Chris’s heart. “_Holy_ _shit_.”

They don’t leave the park ’til two in the morning.

So maybe the summer doesn’t suck.

Maybe the summer is kind of awesome.

**Author's Note:**

> graciously beta'd by ck; many thanks to joce for organizing this exchange <3
> 
> come yell with me about hockey on [tumblr](http://chaospitals.tumblr.com)!


End file.
